Francis Berger
  • Blog
  • My Work

Stories Are the World of Value and Truth

1/25/2017

0 Comments

 
Over the past few days, I have been spending much time thinking about the debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. The more I think about it, the more I gravitate toward's Peterson's side of the argument. This is hardly surprising since I more or less hold similar views concerning the nature of truth and have held these views for many years.

I touch upon the truth contained in stories in my novel The City of Earthly Desire. Toward the end of the novel, a young woman named Brigitta describes the legend of the white stag to the protagonist, Béla. A student of history, Brigitta is interested in the kinds of evidence and hard scientific fact Sam Harris expounds during his debate with Jordan Peterson, but she sees their limits when seen in a larger context of value and truth. After finishing describing the legend of the white stag, she states: 

“Of course, it’s all nonsense, historically speaking, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Though I would never admit this to any historian, I have found legends and myths reveal more about a culture than cold, hard facts do.” 

I discovered a direct connection to this line of thinking in Jordan Peterson's work a few days ago. On his website, he states: 

I came over the course of a decade and a half to understand the meanings of many things that had been entirely hidden from me – things that I had cast away, stupidly, as of little worth. I came to realize that ideologies had a narrative structure – that they were stories, in a word – and that the emotional stability of individuals depended upon the integrity of their stories. I came to realize that stories had a religious substructure (or, to put it another way, that well-constructed stories had a nature so compelling that they gathered religious behaviors and attitudes around them, as a matter of course). I understood, finally, that the world that stories describe is not the objective world, but the world of value – and that it is in this world that we live, first and foremost.
 

Though it is dangerous to equate everything all characters say as representations of an author's beliefs in a novel, I honestly admit that I hold what Brigitta says toward the end of the book to be true. Though I only discovered Peterson's work a couple of months ago, it is very reassuring to know my beliefs in the power of stories and legends may not be as insane as they initially sound. 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Blog and Comments

    Blog posts tend to be spontaneous, unpolished, first draft entries ranging from the insightful and periodically profound to the poorly-argued and occasionally disparaging.
     

    Comments are moderated. Anonymous comments are never published (please use your name or a pseudonym). 

    Emails welcome:

    f er en c ber g er (at) h otm   ail (dot) co m
    Blogs/Sites I Read
    Bruce Charlton's Notions
    Meeting the Masters
    From The Narrow Desert
    Synlogos ✞ Aggregator
    New World Island  
    New World Island YouTube
    ​Steeple Tea
    Berdyaev.com
    Adam Piggott
    Fourth Gospel Blog
    The Orthosphere
    Junior Ganymede

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Picture
    A free PDF is also available in My Work. 
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.